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Tuesday, 14 November 2006 14:32 |
 | | Mark West |
One of the most persuasive arguments for why American voters should select Republican candidates in the Nov. 7 election came from an unexpected source.
Orson Scott Card is a gifted writer of fiction, a man whose speculative novels are not only gripping page-turners but whose works explore complex and subtle human emotions. He has earned a good bit of fame in the world of science fiction; to my mind, he deserves a lot more renown in the world of fiction as a whole.
I was surprised, then, to see a recent editorial he had written in a Greensboro, N.C., alternative newspaper called The Rhinoceros. Card argued that, while we might think that a variety of social issues were important, the most important issue facing the nation was the threat of terrorism. International terrorism is a threat unlike other issues, whose solutions involve adjustments to the structures of society already in place; rather, terrorism is, in Cardës analysis, an existential threat, one which is different in kind from the other challenges facing the nation.
As
such, then, as Card put it in his editorial, a willingness to respond
forcefully to international terrorism should be the determinant of our
voting behavior. Candidates who had advocated a withdrawal from Iraq on
any terms other than a victory which left behind a functioning and
democratic Iraq indicated that they had not understood the existential
nature of the threat of terrorism and were therefore not up to the task
of governing in the new, post-9/11 age.
A premature
withdrawal from Iraq would signal to the world our irresolution in
terms of dealing with the threat of terrorism. In those nations where
an Islamic fundamentalism was ascendant, terrorist groups would be able
to argue that the Americans would soon flee, as they had in Iraq;
therefore, they can position themselves as the only political choice
for resistance against repressive social and economic order. Against
this, the Bush doctrine of vigorous engagement offered the one possible
alternative ÇƒÓ engagement until victory, with victory construed as the
successful formation of a functional democracy.
The problem with
Cardës argument, I would suggest, is that everybody, everywhere,
already knows that the American populace has a very limited willingness
to support foreign engagement. In Vietnam, then in Mogadishu, and in a
host of other drive-by military engagements, the United States has
proven its willingness to use crushing military force ÇƒÓ but only for a
short time. Once the body count gets too high, the American public
loses its taste for nation-building, no matter how great the rewards
that are promised.
It is too late
for Cardës strategy to work. The world already knows we will not stay
in Iraq as long as may be necessary. Vietnam proved that.
Thus, we may be
sure that the unhappy outcomes which Card describes are already here.
The bad guys know that the U.S. will flee before too long and that they
need only wait us out. And the Bush administration knew this, too;
otherwise, they would not have promised the public repeatedly that the
war would be brief, easy, a cakewalk; a war where we would be welcomed
with flowers and candy, rather than with bombs and gunfire.
Americans are
not good at occupations; we are not suited to the bloody business of
imperialism. That is perhaps a failing of democracy; but it is the
case, regardless. Nor, I would argue, is the threat from even the most
militant forms of Islam existential. The United States has faced
terrorism before and survived; we have faced enemies bent on doing us
harm and triumphed.
The real
existential threat, I think, is constitutional. When a president begins
to resemble a king, then we have reached a dangerous point indeed.
What we need
concerning Iraq, though, is a plan that will work with our strengths as
a nation. And, in the elections of Nov. 7, the public spoke loud and
clear of its desire for such a plan. The voters want to know what
victory would look like, and how we would get there. Victory is not
occupation, nor is defining a religion or a technique of war as an
enemy a plan.
And we may be
sure that, if the Democrats do not use their newfound power to generate
a plan that the public deems workable, there will come a November day
upon which they will find themselves rebuked by the American public,
just as the Republicans did on this Nov. 7.
ï
Mark West is a professor of mass communications at UNC Asheville.
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